


and the sea is just a wetter version of the skies

by notavodkashot



Series: Discretion and Restraint [6]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Raising Nemu, Unconventional Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:20:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29910642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/pseuds/notavodkashot
Summary: In which Mayuri made a baby and Shinji deals with it, to the best of his ability.
Relationships: Hirako Shinji/Kurotsuchi Mayuri
Series: Discretion and Restraint [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/476026
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	and the sea is just a wetter version of the skies

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I have got nothing except...yes, Mayuri and Shinji were fucking throughout the majority of Discretion and Restraint, and no, you weren't the only one who didn't notice, it's okay.

Rebuilding is hard, mostly because they have to rebuild _everything_ , and the newly crowned Soul King is frankly determined to be a _bitch_ and not help. 

Shinji is perfectly willing to admit he might be slightly biased in his perception of events, and that it is entirely possible that by the nature of his role as Soul King, he very literally _can’t_ help at all beyond making sure reality stops melting at the seams. But still, Sousuke Aizen is, has been and forever will be a little bitch in his head and he refuses to revisit that assessment any time soon. 

Rebuilding is hard, the losses have been great and unrelenting, and it almost feels spiteful, to have survived, to be expected to go on when so many they know will not. Could not. Still, some have taken it better than others. And some, like the ridiculous, clown-faced genius he’s resigned himself to hold in high esteem despite his best attempts to save himself that doom… well, they’re not taking it so well. 

“That’s a baby,” Shinji points out flatly, in the same desperately deadpan tone one might point out that the sky is blue – well, it’s getting to be blue, they are almost done putting that back together at least – or water is wet. 

Mayuri, because he is a ridiculous, clown-faced genius, and also the greatest asshole Shinji has ever known, spares him only a side look before going back to minding whatever reality-defying nonsense invention he’s fussing over at his work table. On the edge of which, Shinji must insist on pointing out, there’s a small bundle of clothes and a very loudly screaming child that Mayuri is ignoring with equal indolence. 

“That’s a _crying_ baby,” Shinji insists, fingers twitching at the first knuckle – he can restrain those urges, usually, it’s when the twitch starts on the second that he often finds himself with his sword in his hand and his mask halfway down his face before he remembers himself – with the ghost of a movement he hasn’t committed to just yet. “Why do you have a crying baby?” 

“They always cry a lot, the first month,” Mayuri replies, like this isn’t somehow a bizarre thing to say, and continues to not look at the child flexing their impressive-for-their-size lungs, or Shinji’s increasingly distressed glare. “They quiet a lot more after,” he pauses, ominous and terrible, and then shrugs, giving the baby a careless look. “If they survive that long, that is.” 

And then it clicks, terrible and cold, and Shinji feels weird and empty, kinda like when he saw Hiyori fall, cleanly sliced in half. 

“That’s Nemu,” Shinji whispers, stepping up to get a better look of the screaming girl. 

“They were all Nemu,” Mayuri replies, still not looking at him, fussing with his instruments and his notes. He’s let his left pinky nail grow, like the middle one on his right hand, though Shinji has never gotten around to ask why – everything Mayuri does has a purpose, and all of them are the sort of monstrously impersonal kind that make one regret ever asking – because Mayuri’s nails are frankly the least fascinating bits of him. “This one is the Eighth,” Mayuri says after a moment, pausing to turn enough so he can look at the girl, still shrieking out with her inhumanly powerful lungs. “Hachigo Nemuri.” 

Shinji does something impertinent and stupid, which is essentially a good summary of everything he’s ever done in Mayuri’s presence, and reaches out to pull the girl into his arms: she quiets immediately, and he’s startled by the fact she’s _tangible_. Real. There’s the weight of a soul and a body and a _being_ to her. But now that he’s picked her up, he’s not sure what to do and terrified of putting her down again. He makes a further mistake, looking up, because he realizes Mayuri is staring intently at him, with that same expression he always has right before he starts cutting things up with a scalpel. Despite it all, Shinji has never been afraid he’s going to end up floating in bits and pieces inside a labeled jar somewhere in Mayuri’s storeroom… not until right now, that is. 

And then the moment passes and, miraculously, Shinji still has all limbs attached, somehow. 

“I need her back by seven,” Mayuri says, turning back to his work, “there are tests I still need to run on her today.” 

“Okay,” Shinji says, even though it very much isn’t, and he finds himself leaving the makeshift headquarters of the Twelfth with a small, very much not screaming baby in his arms, like he has any business looking after anyone with still unfused skull plates. 

Fuck. 

* * *

Momo coos and takes the sudden addition of a literal baby chewing on Shinji’s haori like it’s the most normal thing in the world. 

The Captain Commander gives him a funny look, and has Nanao deliver some of his favorite sake every other day. Sui-Feng refuses to acknowledge the gremlin child drooling and smearing snot all over his clothes, which Shinji considers a plus since that keeps their interaction at minimum most of the time. Rose sends him that sparkly sweet wine he likes and smiles in such a way that Shinji would feel entitled to punch him for it, where he not usually busy cradling a giggling brat with his punching arm. Isane sends him books, which Shinji reckons is nice if not very useful considering he doesn’t really have time to sit and read any of the nuances of child rearing when child rearing is very much happening as is. 

Byakuya sends more sake, but has Renji deliver it, which is awful because Renji keeps _looking_ at him but not saying anything, and Shinji just wishes he’d laugh at him instead, so he would be justified in kicking his teeth in for the impertinence. Iba delivers the sake in person, along with a very ugly looking plush toy that might have been meant to be a dog, and which Nemu immediately claims as her own. 

Lisa sends him ribbons, colorful and bright, but Nemu is, this must be emphasized, _still a baby_ , and thus doesn’t have hair anywhere near long enough to use those, so they mostly end up getting chewed on, because apparently that’s a thing babies do, put everything in their mouths and chew furiously with the teeth they don’t even have yet. 

Kensei sends him sake and Hisagi, who is apparently great at looking after children, but Shinji has to send him back, soundly defeated and utterly broken, because Nemu has learned to project vomit to show her displeasure and she decidedly does not like him. 

Hitsugaya gives him nothing but the truth – you did this to yourself, you moron, don’t expect anyone else to save you – and Shinji is frankly offended at how much he likes the sourly brat, despite it all. 

Shinji gives Zaraki half the sake he’s been gifted, when he catches the looming brute staring down at Nemu with something almost like longing, and in return Zaraki lets him drop Nemu into his hands whenever he needs to do something that makes Momo glare at him for trying to bring a baby along. 

* * *

“She doesn’t look like you,” Shinji points out, rubbing bright blue hair between his fingers. “Neither did Nemu, for that matter.” 

Soaking baths are the sort of thing Mayuri considers a waste of time and refuses to indulge in except when he’s exhausted himself enough he can’t physically protest getting dragged into one. It doesn’t happen often, but the new anchors he’s designed to hold the rebuilt Seireitei in place tend to leave him barely standing by the time he’s done. And of course, this being Mayuri, he can’t simply _share_ the load with anyone, because then he’d have to reveal the secrets of the structures he’s creating. Shinji thinks they probably shouldn’t let him do that, considering he _is_ an amoral bastard that will send them all spiraling into destruction for shits and giggles if the mood strikes him… but he’s not Captain Commander, so he’s not going to weigh in on the decision making process. 

Besides, he’s biased. Horrifically and very publicly so. 

“They’re _all_ Nemu,” Mayuri insists, muttering the words into the edge of the water, not bothering to open his eyes. 

Shinji considers rephrasing the question and then he realizes he’s not sure he wants to know. He knows Mayuri literally _made_ Nemu, the cusp of his stupid god complex and his need to prove that rules didn’t apply to him. They told him it couldn’t be done, and he went out and did it anyway. Shinji usually ignores how they seem to have that in common, because he’s stubborn about the amount of mochi balls he can stuff into his mouth at any given moment, and maybe how long he can walk on his hands, not rewriting the very literal basic laws of physics _and_ metaphysics. It’s a matter of scale and he refuses to acknowledge the bits and pieces where he’s done exactly that – Sousuke had looked at him and smiled, watched him fall and given him up for dead, and he _should_ have died, they all should have died, but fuck that and fuck letting Sousuke fucking Aizen get the last laugh – because he likes to pretend he isn’t a hypocrite. 

“They’re not clones,” Mayuri murmurs, words squeezed between the imperceptible spaces between his teeth, the sound curling up into Shinji’s ear in that tone he knows no one else is meant to ever hear. “Clones would be unremarkable. Mundane. I am what I am, I already know I exist. It would be no trouble at all, to make another exact replica. Of myself. Of you. No.” He pauses and shifts, one arm hooked on the rim of the tub and lips twitching with that mad scientist grin that gives nightmares to most people. Shinji isn’t most people, though. Shinji leans in to hear what comes after, trying not to read too much about the idea of Mayuri considering making a clone of _him_. “That’s the thing, with Nemu. She has to be _herself_ , and she has to be better than all that came before her. Not perfect,” he adds, with a little snide curl to his lip, before he pulls himself upwards and out of the water, not looking back, “but better. _Always_ better.” 

Shinji watches him go and doesn’t make a snide little quip about whose definition of better is Mayuri using. He doesn’t even make a lewd remark about Mayuri not giving two halves of a shit about sauntering away, naked and wet and distractingly human without the artifice of his office in place. 

Shinji considers sliding down into the water and then holding his breath until he drowns. 

Then he stumbles gracelessly out of the bath, water splashing everywhere, and corners Mayuri in his own bed, teeth bared and fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. Three rooms down the corridor, Akon has placed Nemu’s crib in the same room he sleeps in, just far enough they won’t be heard unless screaming starts, from either side. It doesn’t matter, anyway, Mayuri is going to paint over every mark in the morning, and no one will know they’re there, hiding beneath the deceptively pristine corpse-white he likes hiding behind. 

It doesn’t matter. 

Shinji has always been shit at lying to himself. 

* * *

Nemu’s first word is _why_ , her second is _no_. 

She’s walking around far too soon for her age, as far as Shinji’s concerned, but no one takes him seriously about it because she’s latched up to Mayuri – Mayuri always has a laconic _because_ to every _why_ Nemu has come up with so far, after all – and most of Shinji’s clothes are going unchewed on as of late. She still finds her way to him for every meal, though, and refuses to eat anything that didn’t come from Shinji’s own plate. He reckons that’s why his meals have started to arrive at his desk with cutesy decorations and a decidedly sweeter profile than usual. He considers telling Momo to stop being a brat about things, undermining his authority like a proper lieutenant should, but instead he just switches around the tea he drinks with his food to make up for it. 

“You don’t have to stake a claim,” Zaraki tells him, one of those lazy afternoons where they meet on the hills overlooking the new Seireitei and demolish a frankly obscene amount of sake. “But it won’t leave you alone, until you do.” 

Zaraki has mellowed a lot, after the war. He’s not nice or anything, quite the opposite in fact. But rather than laughing and going on rampages, he’s taken to drawl out insights that are preternaturally sharp, more so because they tend to be right. It’s frankly infuriating, the combination of shrewdness and strength, because a lot of the things he says make people want to punch him for it, but he’s _still_ Zaraki, Kenpachi of the Eleventh, and he’s never not game to kick someone’s teeth in. It’s maddening. Shinji wishes he didn’t find the despicable oaf likable, because then maybe he’d stop coming back for more unwanted truths stabbed right where they hurt most. 

Shinji glares at him and then his drink, and then at the girl sprawled shamelessly in his lap, snoring away her afternoon nap. 

“She’s not mine,” Shinji points out, more out of habit to be contrarian than any real conviction, even though there’s a growing spot of drool on his haori that begs to disagree. “It’s not… it’s not like that.” 

Zaraki grins, teeth sharp, and then he tips back his own cup with malicious glee. 

“See, this is why I like you,” he says, reaching out to refill Shinji’s cup before his own, “few have your talent to be self-destructive and still make it entertaining.” 

Shinji considers rolling Nemu off his lap and onto the soft grass – she won’t wake up, she sleeps sound and heavy, at precise intervals, punctual like clockwork – pulling out his zanpakuto and trying his best to stab Zaraki until he stops laughing at him. But he recognizes it’d be far more succinct to simply throw himself face first into his own blade. 

He drinks his sake, instead. 

* * *

One day, Nemu plants herself before him, soft features sternly set as she looks up at him from somewhere around knee height. 

“You have a zanpakuto,” she says, words perfectly enunciated despite the fact they sometimes feel like they’re too big to come from a mouth so small. She pauses, frowns so hard her nose scrunches up rather adorably, and then tries again: “ _everyone_ has a zanpakuto but me.” 

She leaves the rest of the question unasked, which is so unlike her Shinji has no other option but to sit back and pull her up into his arms. 

Nemu didn’t have one. Not _this_ Nemu. Her predecessor. Her asauchi had never evolved, Mayuri theorized, because upon creation, no zanpakuto had been created. She’d never had a need for it to be competent at her job anyway, and that’s probably why Nemu – _his_ Nemu – hasn’t been given one. After all, as Mayuri is fond of saying, they’re _all_ Nemu. 

But the thought lingers and twists, and as Shinji finds himself playing with her hair, fingers entwined with the strands that are neither Mayuri’s nor his own, but hers, solely hers, he comes to another imprudent and frankly stupid decision. 

* * *

“Better, right?” Shinji says, sitting on the guardrail of the balcony of Mayuri’s personal study, watching the crowd of lieutenants led by his own attempting their best to teach Nemu how swing a sword and maybe not lose a limb in the process. “That’s what you said.” 

Mayuri is standing beyond the edge of the light coming from the balcony, eyes glowing eerily as he gives Shinji another of those looks, like he’s a butterfly he hasn’t figured out the best way to rip the wings off. It’s not a good thing, he’s fairly sure, being looked at like that, by Kurotsuchi Mayuri, personified gaping maw of madness that he is. And yet, somehow, he’s still here, all limbs attached. 

Sometimes, when he’s feeling morose and stupid and caving under the weight of all the choices he’s ever made, Shinji figures Mayuri won’t do him the courtesy of killing him until he’s grown bored of him, and it’s frankly depressing how encouraging the thought is. 

“I keep forgetting,” Mayuri says, expression carefully neutral, further distorted by the shadows, even though Shinji has an eye to tell exactly where the contour of his face is, even beneath the most outrageous of his outfits, “that you actually _listen_.” 

Shinji grins and shrugs and turns away before he does something stupid. 

Then he remembers he’s committed to idiocy now, to the bitter end, so he might as well indulge in it: he swings off the balcony rail and onto the study proper, shoulders slouched and expression sly. 

“You don’t need to take it personally,” he says, walking up to where Mayuri stands, not budging an inch even when Shinji lets himself deep into his personal space. “Liking me, I mean,” Shinji goes on, grin widening when Mayuri’s eyes narrow and he lets out a dismissive huff. “I’m very likable, I’ll have you know.” 

Mayuri is sturdy, is the thing. He doesn’t look like it and even more rarely acts the part, but he’s solid beneath the bulk of his clothes. He designed and redesigned himself to suit his task: he’s not _frail_. Mayuri is not to be moved unless he allows himself to be moved, and that’s a thought Shinji entertains far more often than sane people should, like every time he tilts his head enough to kiss him. It’s worth it for the three seconds before his knees buckle under the poison smeared on his lips and already spreading vicious like warmth on his skin. 

Every bit of Mayuri is toxic, after all, by design. 

“One day,” Mayuri says, rather ominously despite the fact he’s caught Shinji in place, one arm hooked easy around his back, “I’m not going to let you have the antidote, and that will teach you, Hirako Shinji.” 

Shinji grins and regrets nothing, nothing at all. 

* * *

One day, Shinji wakes up in his own bed with Mayuri sprawled gracelessly next to him, taking up most of it. Then Nemu bursts into the room to show off how the guard of her asauchi has shifted overnight. It looks nothing like Mayuri’s Ashisogi Jizou, or even Shinji’s Sakanade. 

It is, after all, Nemu’s very own. 

Shinji watches Mayuri interrogate Nemu like any other test subject, except that’s not true: his skin is bare, free of painted poison and the million other safeguards he insists on wearing even in the safety of his own lab. If one were inclined to look at them from the right angle, without knowing any of the things Shinji knows, one could almost see them as nothing more than father and daughter, sharing an excited milestone in their lives. 

He knows better, though. He knows better and he’s stupid enough he wouldn’t trade that knowledge for the world. 

Not perfect, Mayuri said, better. 

Well, if nothing else, he’s going to try. 

**Author's Note:**

> [You can come hangout on Twitter if you want!](https://twitter.com/notavodkashot)


End file.
